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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://plivo.com/docs/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

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Overview

You can use voicemail to capture a caller’s message if a call recipient is unavailable. This guide shows how to set up voicemail, either by using our PHLO visual workflow builder or our APIs and XML documents. Follow the instructions in one of the tabs below.
Here’s how to implement voicemail using XML.

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How it works

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Prerequisites

To get started, you need a Plivo account — sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already. You must have a voice-enabled Plivo phone number to receive incoming calls; you can rent numbers from the Numbers page of the Plivo console, or by using the Numbers API. If this is your first time using Plivo APIs, follow our instructions to set up a Ruby development environment and a web server and safely expose that server to the internet.

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Create a Rails controller to implement voicemail

Change to the project directory and run this command to create a Rails controller for inbound calls.
$ rails generate controller Plivo voice
This command generates a controller named plivo_controller in the app/controllers/ directory and a respective view in app/views/plivo. We can delete the view as we do not need it.
$ rm app/views/plivo/voice.html.erb
Edit app/controllers/plivo_controller.rb and paste this code into the PlivoController class.
include Plivo
include Plivo::XML
include Plivo::Exceptions

class PlivoController < ApplicationController
	def voicemail
		response = Response.new

		first_speak_body = 'Please leave a message after the beep. Press the star key when done.'
		response.addSpeak(first_speak_body)

		params = {
			action: 'https://www.foo.com/get_recording/',
			maxLength: '30',
			finishOnKey: '*'
		}
		response.addRecord(params)

		second_speak_body = 'Recording not received.'
		response.addSpeak(second_speak_body)
				xml = PlivoXML.new(response)
		render xml: xml.to_xml
	end
end

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Add a route

To add a route for the inbound function in the PlivoController class, edit config/routes.rb and add this line after the inbound route.
get 'plivo/voicemail'
Start the Rails server
$ rails server
You should see your basic server application in action at http://localhost:3000/plivo/voicemail/.

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Create a Plivo application for voicemail

Associate the Rails controller you created with Plivo by creating a Plivo application. Visit Voice > Applications in the Plivo console and click on Add New Application, or use Plivo’s Application API.Give your application a name — we called ours Voicemail. Enter the server URL you want to use (for example https://<yourdomain>.com/voicemail/) in the Answer URL field and set the method to GET. Click Create Application to save your application.

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Assign a Plivo number to your application

Navigate to the Numbers page and select the phone number you want to use for this application.From the Application Type drop-down, select XML Application.From the Plivo Application drop-down, select Voicemail (the name we gave the application).Click Update Number to save.

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Test

Make a call to your Plivo number and leave yourself a voicemail message.